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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Both approaches seem to work well in various situations, which is why I'm skeptical of the value of these kinds of rants which lack comparative analysis. Apparently it works badly in Hungary; but works well in Sweden. It'd be more enlightening to read some analysis of the differences, since it empirically isn't the case that strong parental leave policies always and everywhere cause high unemployment, even if they anecdotally cause one dude in Hungary to not want to hire women.

(I'd personally guess that culture and corruption have more to do with the large economic differences between Sweden and Hungary than taxation or parental-leave policies do, so I think he's barking up the wrong tree.)

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Apparently it works badly in Hungary; but works well in Sweden.

Or perhaps Sweden has a strong enough economy to compensate for the harms caused by this policy, but Hungary does not.

Or possibly an established enough economy. How many startups are there?

Billion-dollar companies don't have to worry about it nearly as much as tiny ten-man ventures.

Sweden has a reasonable number of startups relative to its population: MySQL, Spotify, Wrapp, Mojang, Massive, Absolicon, etc. But I agree that the economies are quite different, which is why I prefer careful analysis (preferably based on data) to anecdotes.

If it's really true that someone who just started work can immediately take three years maternal leave off, fully paid, and then be due 2.5 months accrued paid vacation time when they return, then I can't imagine how that could work. I don't know if it really works that way in Hungary though, or in Sweden for that matter.

It doesnt work like that. The company doesnt pay you, the state does, and you get less. You do not get vacation time.

In Sweden you wouldn't get 2.5 months of accrued paid vacation, it's more like 10 days, as the first 120 days (of 480) (pa/)maternal leave is counted towards vacation.

Then again you have the legal right to take 25 days of vacation per year, but not all of these have to be paid.

How can the government mandating the kind of paid-leave in Sweden be good for a startup? Tell me how this sort of policy can increase a new startups short-term cash flow? You can't exactly advertize superior working conditions (Google w/ free food/massages/nerf guns/paid child-related leave) since you do not have any track-record of being the hot new startup. Even if you did have the best working conditions available having to pay out for an employee who is not producing anything would probably kill the startup.

Culture/location/talent/vc $ is what makes a company though and to some extent trumps unfavorable tax/labor laws, this is IMO why SV & California have most of the startups as compared to Arizona/Texas or why Scandinavia>Eastern Europe.

I'd say it's good for talent since you don't have to pick a startup depending on what benefits you get (vacation time, health insurance, parental leave) due to the government providing well enough to begin with. Of course employers here can differentiate by offering more vacation, privatized health insurance, pension deals, but the swedish government seems to provide a better package than most US employers do.

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